My hand misses the glass the way a tongue does a tooth,
returning again and again to vacancy. It wants purpose

beyond tapping, the glamour of the louche, the toast,
the weighted pause. And there are days that I think

shot-worthy, events slipping from my grasp, very like
a glass, crashing. And the smarminess that seems to

emanate from my refusal, no matter how diffidently
I make it, little miss holier-than-thou sipping tea,

everyone needing to be that much louder to fill
the gap, to make it clear I’m not the boss of them.

And the slow slog of it all, the way a day is only a day,
and another to follow, and one to follow that,

in a tedium of accretion, and should I falter, having to
begin again at zero (my God!). And everyone so proud

of me, as if I’d discovered an element, extra-terrestrials,
a way to reel more than just myself back from extinction.

Devon Balwit

 

Devon Balwit teaches and writes in Portland, Oregon. She is the author of four chapbooks. Her individual poems can be found in places such as The Ekphrastic Review, Poets Reading the News, Autumn Sky Daily, Concis, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Front Porch and more.

© 2017